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THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE 






1 ^^° 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS 
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN & CO., Limited 

LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. 

TORONTO 



THE WILD SWANS 
AT COOLE 



BY 
W. B. YEATS 



Neto ¥orfc 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1919 

All rights reserved 






COPYRIGHT, 1917 AND 1918, 

By MARGARET C. ANDERSON. 

Copyright, 1918, 

By HARRIET MONROE. 

Copyright, 1918 and; 1919, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 



Set up and electrotyped, Published March, 1919. 



NortnooO tyrtss 

J. 8. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Go. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 



M \2 i9i9 



PREFACE 

This book is, in part, a reprint of 
The Wild Swans at Coole, printed a 
year ago on my sister's hand-press 
at Dundrum, Co. Dublin. I have 
not, however, reprinted a play which 
may be a part of a book of new 
plays suggested by the dance plays of 
Japan, and I have added a number 
of new poems. Michael Robartes and 
John Aherne, whose names occur in 
one or other of these, are characters 
in some stories I wrote years ago, 
who have once again become a part 
of the phantasmagoria through which 
I can alone express my convictions 
about the world. I have the fancy 



vi PREFACE 

that I read the name John Aherne 
among those of men prosecuted for 
making a disturbance at the first 
production of "The Play Boy," which 
may account for his animosity to 
myself. 

W. B. Y. 

Ballylee, Co. Galway, 
September 1918. 



CONTENTS 



The Wild Swans at Coole 








PAGE 
1 


In Memory of Major Robert Gregory 


4 


An Irish Airman foresees his Death 


13> 


Men improve with the Years . 


14 


The Collar-Bone of a Hare 






. 15 


Under the Round Tower . 






. 17 


Solomon to Sheba 








. 19 


The Living Beauty 










. 21 


A Song . 










. 22 


To a Young Beauty 










. 23 


To a Young Girl 










. 24 


The Scholars 










. 25 


Tom O'Roughley . 










. 26 


The Sad Shepherd 










. 27 


Lines written in Dejection 






. 39 


i 


trii 











viii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Dawn 40 

On Woman 41 

The Fisherman 44 

The Hawk 46 

Memory 47 

Her Praise 48 

The People 50 

His Phoenix 54 

A Thought from Propertius ... 58 

Broken Dreams 59 

A Deep-Sworn Vow 63 

Presences 64 

The Balloon of the Mind ... 66 

To a Squirrel at Kyle-Na-Gno . . 67 

On being asked for a War Poem . . 68 

In Memory of Alfred Pollexfen . . 69 

Upon a Dying Lady 72 

Ego Dominus Tuus 79 

A Prayer on going into my House . . 86 

The Phases of the Moon .... 88 
The Cat and the Moon . . . .102 



CONTENTS ix 

PAGE 

The Saint and the Hunchback . . .104 

Two Songs of a Fool 106 

Another Song of a Fool . . . .108 
The Double Vision of Michael Robartes 108 
Note 115 



THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE 

The trees are in their autumn beauty, 

The woodland paths are dry, 

Under the October twilight the water 

Mirrors a still sky ; 

Upon the brimming water among the 

stones 
Are nine and fifty swans. 

The nineteenth Autumn has come upon 

me 
Since I first made my count ; 
I saw, before I had well finished, 
All suddenly mount 
And scatter wheeling in great broken 

rings 
Upon their clamorous wings. 



2 THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE 

I have looked upon those brilliant 
creatures, 

And now my heart is sore. 

All's changed since I, hearing at twi- 
light, 

The first time on this shore, 

The bell-beat of their wings above my 
head, 

Trod with a lighter tread. 

Unwearied still, lover by lover, 
They paddle in the cold, 
Companionable streams or climb the 

air; 
Their hearts have not grown old ; 
Passion or conquest, wander where 

they will, 
Attend upon them still. 

But now they drift on the still 

water 
Mysterious, beautiful ; 



THE WILD SWANS AT COOLE 3 

Among what rushes will they build, 

By what lake's edge or pool 

Delight men's eyes, when I awake 

some day 
To find they have flown away ? 



IN MEMORY OF 
MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 

1 

Now that we're almost settled in our 

house 
I'll name the friends that cannot sup 

with us 
Beside a fire of turf in the ancient 

tower, 
And having talked to some late 

hour 
Climb up the narrow winding stair to 

bed: 
Discoverers of forgotten truth 
Or mere companions of my youth, 
All, all are in my thoughts to-night, 

being dead. 

4 



MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 5 



Always we'd have the new friend meet 

the old, 
And we are hurt if either friend seem 

cold, 
And there is salt to lengthen out the 

smart 
In the affections of our heart, 
And quarrels are blown up upon that 

head; 
But not a friend that I would bring 
This night can set us quarrelling, 
For all that come into my mind are 

dead. 

3 

Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind, 
That loved his learning better than 

mankind, 
Though courteous to the worst ; much 

falling he 
Brooded upon sanctity 



6 MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 

Till all his Greek and Latin learning 

seemed 
A long blast upon the horn that 

brought 
A little nearer to his thought 
A measureless consummation that he 

dreamed. 

4 

And that enquiring man John Synge 

comes next, 
That dying chose the living world for 

text 
And never could have rested in the 

tomb 
But that, long travelling, he had 

come 
Towards nightfall upon certain set 

apart 
In a most desolate stony place, 
Towards nightfall upon a race 
Passionate and simple like his heart. 



MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 7 
5 

And then I think of old George 
Pollexfen, 

In muscular youth well known to 
Mayo men 

For horsemanship at meets or at race- 
courses, 

That could have shown how purebred 
horses 

And solid men, for all their passion, live 

But as the outrageous stars incline 

By opposition, square and trine ; 

Having grown sluggish and contem- 
plative. 

6 

They were my close companions many 

a year, 
A portion of my mind and life, as it 

were, 
And now their breathless faces seem 

to look 



8 MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 

Out of some old picture-book ; 

I am accustomed to their lack of 

breath, 
But not that my dear friend's dear son, 
Our Sidney and our perfect man, 
Could share in that discourtesy of 

death. 

7 

For all things the delighted eye now 
sees 

Were loved by him; the old storm- 
broken trees 

That cast their shadows upon road 
and bridge ; 

The tower set on the stream's edge ; 

The ford where drinking cattle make 
a stir 

Nightly, and startled by that sound 

The water-hen must change her 
ground ; 

He might have been your heartiest 
welcomer. 



MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 9 

8 

When with the Galway foxhounds he 

would ride 
From Castle Taylor to the Rox- 

borough side 
Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his 

pace; 
At Mooneen he had leaped a place 
So perilous that half the astonished 

meet 
Had shut their eyes, and where 

was it 
He rode a race without a bit ? 
And yet his mind outran the horses' 

feet. 

9 

We dreamed that a great painter had 

been born 
To cold Clare rock and Galway rock 

and thorn, 



10 MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 

To that stern colour and that delicate 

line 
That are our secret discipline 
Wherein the gazing heart doubles her 

might. 
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, 
And yet he had the intensity 
To have published all to be a world's 

delight. 

10 

What other could so well have coun- 
selled us 

In all lovely intricacies of a house 

As he that practised or that under- 
stood 

All work in metal or in wood, 

In moulded plaster or in carven stone ? 

Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, 

And all he did done perfectly 

As though he had but that one trade 
alone. 



MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 11 



11 

Some burn damp fagots, others may 

consume 
The entire combustible world in one 

small room 
As though dried straw, and if we turn 

about 
The bare chimney is gone black out 
Because the work had finished in that 

flare. 
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he, 
As 'twere all life's epitome. 
What made us dream that he could 

comb grey hair ? 



12 

I had thought, seeing how bitter is 

that wind 
That shakes the shutter, to have 

brought to mind 



12 MAJOR ROBERT GREGORY 

All those that manhood tried, or child- 
hood loved, 
Or boyish intellect approved, 
With some appropriate commentary 

on each ; 
Until imagination brought 
A fitter welcome ; but a thought 
Of that late death took all my heart 
for speech. 



AN IRISH AIRMAN FORESEES 
HIS DEATH 

I know that I shall meet my fate 
Somewhere among the clouds above ; 
Those that I fight I do not hate 
Those that I guard I do not love ; 
My country is Kiltartan Cross, 
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor, 
No likely end could bring them loss 
Or leave them happier than before. 
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight, 
Nor public man, nor angry crowds, 
A lonely impulse of delight 
Drove to this tumult in the clouds ; 
I balanced all, brought all to mind, 
The years to come seemed waste of 

breath, 
A waste of breath the years behind 
In balance with this life, this death. 

13 



MEN IMPROVE WITH THE 
YEARS 

I am worn out with dreams ; 

A weather-worn, marble triton 

Among the streams ; 

And all day long I look 

Upon this lady's beauty 

As though I had found in book 

A pictured beauty, 

Pleased to have filled the eyes 

Or the discerning ears, 

Delighted to be but wise, 

For men improve with the years ; 

And yet and yet 

Is this my dream, or the truth ? 

O would that we had met 

When I had my burning youth ; 

But I grow old among dreams, 

A weather-worn, marble triton 

Among the streams. 

14 



// 



THE COLLAR-BONE OF A 
HARE 

Would I could cast a sail on the water 

Where many a king has gone 

And many a king's daughter, 

And alight at the comely trees and the 
lawn, 

The playing upon pipes and the danc- 
ing, 

And learn that the best thing is 

To change my loves while dancing 

And pay but a kiss for a kiss. 

I would find by the edge of that water 
The collar-bone of a hare 
Worn thin by the lapping of water, 
And pierce it through with a gimlet 
and stare 

15 



16 COLLAR-BONE OF A HARE 

At the old bitter world where they 

marry in churches, 
And laugh over the untroubled water 
At all who marry in churches, 
Through the white thin bone of a hare. 



UNDER THE ROUND TOWER 

* Although I'd He lapped up in linen 
A deal I'd sweat and little earn 

If I should live as live the neighbours,' 
Cried the beggar, Billy Byrne ; 

* Stretch bones till the daylight come 
On great-grandfather's battered tomb.' 

Upon a grey old battered tombstone 
In Glendalough beside the stream, 
Where the O' Byrnes and Byrnes are 

buried, 
He stretched his bones and fell in a 

dream 
Of sun and moon that a good hour 
Bellowed and pranced in the round 

tower ; 

c 17 



18 UNDER THE ROUND TOWER 

Of golden king and silver lady, 
Bellowing up and bellowing round, 
Till toes mastered a sweet measure, 
Mouth mastered a sweet sound, 
Prancing round and prancing up 
Until they pranced upon the top. 

That golden king and that wild lady 

Sang till stars began to fade, 

Hands gripped in hands, toes close 

together, 
Hair spread on the wind they made ; 
That lady and that golden king 
Could like a brace of blackbirds sing. 

'It's certain that my luck is broken,' 
That rambling jailbird Billy said ; 
'Before nightfall I'll pick a pocket 
And snug it in a feather-bed, 
I cannot find the peace of home 
On great-grandfather's battered tomb.' 



SOLOMON TO SHEBA 

Sang Solomon to Sheba, 
And kissed her dusky face, 
'All day long from mid-day 
We have talked in the one place, 
All day long from shadowless noon 
We have gone round and round 
In the narrow theme of love 
Like an old horse in a pound.' 

To Solomon sang Sheba, 
Planted on his knees, 
' If you had broached a matter 
That might the learned please, 
You had before the sun had thrown 
Our shadows on the ground 
Discovered that my thoughts, not it, 
Are but a narrow pound.' 

19 



20 SOLOMON TO SHEBA 

Sang Solomon to Sheba, 

And kissed her Arab eyes, 

'There's not a man or woman 

Born under the skies 

Dare match in learning with us two, 

And all day long we have found 

There's not a thing but love can make 

The world a narrow pound.' 



THE LIVING BEAUTY 

I'll say and maybe dream I have 

drawn content — 
Seeing that time has frozen up the 

blood, 
The wick of youth being burned and 

the oil spent — 
From beauty that is cast out of a 

mould 
In bronze, or that in dazzling marble 

appears, 
Appears, and when we have gone is 

gone again, 
Being more indifferent to our solitude 
Than 'twere an apparition. O heart, 

we are old, 

The living beauty is for younger men, 

We cannot pay its tribute of wild tears. 
21 



A SONG 

I thought no more was needed 
Youth to prolong 
Than dumb-bell and foil 
To keep the body young. 
Oh, who could have foretold 
That the heart grows old ? 

Though I have many words, 
What woman's satisfied, 
I am no longer faint 
Because at her side ? 
Oh, who could have foretold 
That the heart grows old ? 

I have not lost desire 

But the heart that I had, 

I thought 'twould burn my body 

Laid on the death-bed. 

But who could have foretold 

That the heart grows old ? 

22 



TO A YOUNG BEAUTY 

Dear fellow-artist, why so free 

With every sort of company, 

With every Jack and Jill ? 

Choose your companions from the best ; 

Who draws a bucket with the rest 

Soon topples down the hill. 

You may, that mirror for a school, 

Be passionate, not bountiful 

As common beauties may, 

Who were not born to keep in trim 

With old Ezekiel's cherubim 

But those of Beaujolet. 

I know what wages beauty gives, 
How hard a life her servant lives, 
Yet praise the winters gone ; 
There is not a fool can call me friend, 
And I may dine at journey's end 
With Landor and with Donne. 

23 



TO A YOUNG GIRL 

My dear, my dear, I know 

More than another 

What makes your heart beat so ; 

Not even your own mother 

Can know it as I know, 

Who broke my heart for her 

When the wild thought, 

That she denies 

And has forgot, 

Set all her blood astir 

And glittered in her eyes. 



24 



THE SCHOLARS 

Bald heads forgetful of their sins, 

Old, learned, respectable bald heads 

Edit and annotate the lines 

That young men, tossing on their beds, 

Rhymed out in love's despair 

To flatter beauty's ignorant ear. 

They'll cough in the ink to the world's 

end; 
Wear out the carpet with their shoes 
Earning respect; have no strange 

friend ; 
If they have sinned nobody knows. 
Lord, what would they say 
Should their Catullus walk that way ? 



25 



TOM O'ROUGHLEY 

'Though logic choppers rule the town, 
And every man and maid and boy- 
Has marked a distant object down, 
An aimless joy is a pure joy,' 
Or so did Tom O'Roughley say 
That saw the surges running by, 
'And wisdom is a butterfly 
And not a gloomy bird of prey. 

'If little planned is little sinned 
But little need the grave distress. 
What's dying but a second wind ? 
How but in zigzag wantonness 
Could trumpeter Michael be so brave ? ' 
Or something of that sort he said, 
'And if my dearest friend were dead 
I'd dance a measure on his grave.' 

26 



THE SAD SHEPHERD 

Shepherd 

That cry's from the first cuckoo of 

the year 
I wished before it ceased. 

Goatherd 

Nor bird nor beast 
Could make me wish for anything this 

day, 
Being old, but that the old alone might 

die, 
And that would be against God's 

Providence. 
Let the young wish. But what has 

brought you here ? 
Never until this moment have we met 

27 



28 THE SAD SHEPHERD 

Where my goats browse on the scarce 

grass or leap 
From stone to stone. 



Shepherd 

I am looking for strayed sheep ; 
Something has troubled me and in 

my trouble 
I let them stray. I thought of rhyme 

alone, 
For rhyme can beat a measure out 

of trouble 
And make the daylight sweet once 

more ; but when 
I had driven every rhyme into its 

place 
The sheep had gone from theirs. 

Goatherd 

I know right well 
What turned so good a shepherd from 
his charge. 



THE SAD SHEPHERD 29 

Shepherd 

He that was best in every country 

sport 
And every country craft, and of us 

all 
Most courteous to slow age and hasty 

youth 
Is dead. 

Goatherd 

The boy that brings my griddle 
cake 
Brought the bare news. 

Shepherd 

He had thrown the crook away 
And died in the great war beyond the 
sea. 

Goatherd 

He had often played his pipes among 
my hills 



30 THE SAD SHEPHERD 

And when he played it was their 

loneliness, 
The exultation of their stone, that cried 
Under his fingers. 

Shepherd 
I had it from his mother, 
And his own flock was browsing at 
the door. 

Goatherd 
How does she bear her grief? There 

is not a shepherd 
But grows more gentle when he speaks 

her name, 
Remembering kindness done, and how 

can I, 
That found when I had neither goat 

nor grazing 
New welcome and old wisdom at her fire 
Till winter blasts were gone, but speak 

of her 
Even before his children and his wife. 



THE SAD SHEPHERD 31 

Shepherd 

She goes about her house erect and 

calm 
Between the pantry and the linen 

chest, 
Or else at meadow or at grazing over- 
looks 
Her labouring men, as though her 

darling lived 
But for her grandson now; there is 

no change 
But such as I have seen upon her 

face 
Watching our shepherd sports at 

harvest-time 
When her son's turn was over. 

Goatherd 

Sing your song, 
I too have rhymed my reveries, but 

youth 
Is hot to show whatever it has found 



32 THE SAD SHEPHERD 

And till that's done can neither work 
nor wait. 

Old goatherds and old goats, if in all 
else 

Youth can excel them in accomplish- 
ment, 

Are learned in waiting. 

Shepherd 

You cannot but have seen 
That he alone had gathered up no gear, 
Set carpenters to work on no wide 

table, 
On no long bench nor lofty milking 

shed 
As others will, when first they take 

possession, 
But left the house as in his father's 

time 
As though he knew himself, as it were, 

a cuckoo, 
No settled man. And now that he is 

gone 



THE SAD SHEPHERD 33 

There's nothing of him left but half 

a score 
Of sorrowful, austere, sweet, lofty pipe 

tunes. 

Goatherd 
You have put the thought in rhyme. 

Shepherd 

I worked all day 
And when 'twas done so little had I 

done 
That maybe 'I am sorry' in plain 

prose 
Had sounded better to your mountain 
fancy 

[He sings. 
6 Like the speckled bird that steers 
Thousands of leagues oversea, 
And runs for a while or a wHile half- 
flies 
Upon his yellow legs through our 
meadows, 



34 THE SAD SHEPHERD 

He stayed for a while ; and we 
Had scarcely accustomed our ears 
To his speech at the break of day, 
Had scarcely accustomed our eyes 
To his shape in the lengthening 

shadows, 
Where the sheep are thrown in the 

pool, 
When he vanished from ears and eyes. 
I had wished a dear thing on that 

day 
I heard him first, but man is a fool.' 

Goatherd 

You sing as always of the natural 

life, 
And I that made like music in my 

youth 
Hearing it now have sighed for that 

young man 
And certain lost companions of my 

own. 



THE SAD SHEPHERD 35 

Shepherd 

They say that on your barren moun- 
tain ridge 

You have measured out the road that 
the soul treads 

When it has vanished from our natural 
eyes; 

That you have talked with apparitions. 

Goatherd 

Indeed 
My daily thoughts since the first 

stupor of youth 
Have found the path my goats' feet 

cannot find. 

Shepherd 

Sing, for it may be that your thoughts 

have plucked 
Some medicable herb to make our 

grief 
Less bitter. 



36 THE SAD SHEPHERD 

Goatherd 

They have brought me from that 
ridge 
Seed pods and flowers that are not 
all wild poppy. 

[Sings. 
6 He grows younger every second 
That were all his birthdays reckoned 
Much too solemn seemed ; 
Because of what he had dreamed, 
Or the ambitions that he served, 
Much too solemn and reserved. 
Jaunting, journeying 
To his own dayspring, 
He unpacks the loaded pern 
Of all 'twas pain or joy to learn, 
Of all that he had made. 
The outrageous war shall fade ; 
At some old winding whitethorn root 
He'll practice on the shepherd's flute, 
Or on the close-cropped grass 
Court his shepherd lass, 



THE SAD SHEPHERD 37 

Or run where lads reform our day- 
time 
Till that is their long shouting play- 
time; 
Knowledge he shall unwind 
Through victories of the mind, 
Till, clambering at the cradle side, 
He dreams himself his mother's pride, 
All knowledge lost in trance 
Of sweeter ignorance/ 

Shepherd 

When I have shut these ewes and this 
old ram 

Into the fold, we'll to the woods and 
there 

Cut out our rhymes on strips of new- 
torn bark 

But put no name and leave them at 
her door. 

To know the mountain and the valley 
grieve 



38 THE SAD SHEPHERD 

May be a quiet thought to wife and 

mother, 
And children when they spring up 

shoulder high. 



LINES WRITTEN IN 
DEJECTION 

When have I last looked on 

The round green eyes and the long 

wavering bodies 
Of the dark leopards of the moon ? , 
All the wild witches those most noble 

ladies, 
For all their broom-sticks and their 

tears, 
Their angry tears, are gone. 
The holy centaurs of the hills are 

banished ; 
And I have nothing but harsh sun ; 
Heroic mother moon has vanished, 
And now that I have come to fifty 

years 
I must endure the timid sun. 

39 



THE DAWN 

I would be ignorant as the dawn 

That has looked down 

On that old queen measuring a town 

With the pin of a brooch, 

Or on the withered men that saw 

From their pedantic Babylon 

The careless planets in their courses, 

The stars fade out where the moon 
comes, 

And took their tablets and did sums ; 

I would be ignorant as the dawn 

That merely stood, rocking the glitter- 
ing coach 

Above the cloudy shoulders of the 
horses ; 

I would be — for no knowledge is 
worth a straw — 

Ignorant and wanton as the dawn. 

40 



ON WOMAN 

May God be praised for woman 
That gives up all her mind, 
A man may find in no man 
A friendship of her kind 
That covers all he has brought 
As with her flesh and bone, 
Nor quarrels with a thought 
Because it is not her own. 

Though pedantry denies 
It's plain the Bible means 
That Solomon grew wise 
While talking with his queens. 
Yet never could, although 
They say he counted grass, 
Count all the praises due 

41 



42 ON WOMAN 

When Sheba was his lass, 

When she the iron wrought, or 

When from the smithy fire 

It shuddered in the water : 

Harshness of their desire 

That made them stretch and yawn, 

Pleasure that comes with sleep, 

Shudder that made them one. 

What else He give or keep 

God grant me — no, not here, 

For I am not so bold 

To hope a thing so dear 

Now I am growing old, 

But when if the tale's true 

The Pestle of the moon 

That pounds up all anew 

Brings me to birth again — 

To find what once I had 

And know what once I have known, 

Until I am driven mad, 

Sleep driven from my bed, 

By tenderness and care, 

Pity, an aching head, 



ON WOMAN 43 



Gnashing of teeth, despair ; 
And all because of some one 
Perverse creature of chance, 
And live like Solomon 
That Sheba led a dance. 



THE FISHERMAN 

Although I can see him still, 
The freckled man who goes 
To a grey place on a hill 
In grey Connemara clothes 
At dawn to cast his flies, 
It's long since I began 
To call up to the eyes 
This wise and simple man. 
All day I'd looked in the face 
What I had hoped 'twould be 
To write for my own race 
And the reality ; 
The living men that I hate, 
The dead man that I loved, 
The craven man in his seat, 
The insolent unreproved, 
And no knave brought to book 
Who has won a drunken cheer, 

44 



THE FISHERMAN 45 

The witty man and his joke 
Aimed at the commonest ear, 
The clever man who cries 
The catch-cries of the clown, 
The beating down of the wise 
And great Art beaten down. 

Maybe a twelvemonth since 

Suddenly I began, 

In scorn of this audience, 

Imagining a man 

And his sun-freckled face, 

And grey Connemara cloth, 

Climbing up to a place 

Where stone is dark under froth, 

And the down turn of his wrist 

When the flies drop in the stream : 

A man who does not exist, 

A man who is but a dream ; 

And cried, 'Before I am old 

I shall have written him one 

Poem maybe as cold 

And passionate as the dawn.' 



THE HAWK 

* Call down the hawk from the air ; 

Let him be hooded or caged 

Till the yellow eye has grown mild, 

For larder and spit are bare, 

The old cook enraged, 

The scullion gone wild.' 

'I will not be clapped in a hood, 
Nor a cage, nor alight upon wrist, 
Now I have learnt to be proud 
Hovering over the wood 
In the broken mist 
Or tumbling cloud.' 

' What tumbling cloud did you cleave, 
Yellow-eyed hawk of the mind, 
Last evening ? that I, who had sat 
Dumbfounded before a knave, 
Should give to my friend 
A pretence of wit.' 

46 



MEMORY 

One had a lovely face, 
And two or three had charm, 
But charm and face were in vain 
Because the mountain grass 
Cannot but keep the form 
Where the mountain hare has lain. 



47 



HER PRAISE 

She is foremost of those that I would 

hear praised. 
I have gone about the house, gone up 

and down 
As a man does who has published a 

new book 
Or a young girl dressed out in her new 

gown, 
And though I have turned the talk by 

hook or crook 
Until her praise should be the upper- 
most theme, 
A woman spoke of some new tale she 

had read, 
A man confusedly in a half dream 
As though some other name ran in 

his head. 

48 



HER PRAISE 49 

She is foremost of those that I would 

hear praised. 
I will talk no more of books or the long 

war 
But walk by the dry thorn until I 

have found 
Some beggar sheltering from the wind, 

and there 
Manage the talk until her name come 

round. 
If there be rags enough he will know 

her name 
And be well pleased remembering it, 

for in the old days, 
Though she had young men's praise 

and old men's blame, 
Among the poor both old and young 

gave her praise. 



THE PEOPLE 

'What have I earned for all that 

work,' I said, 
'For all that I have done at my own 

charge ? 
The daily spite of this unmannerly 

town, 
Where who has served the most is 

most defamed, 
The reputation of his lifetime lost 
Between the night and morning. I 

might have lived, 
And you know well how great the 

longing has been, 
Where every day my footfall should 

have lit 
In the green shadow of Ferrara wall ; 

50 



THE PEOPLE 51 

Or climbed among the images of the 

past — 
The unperturbed and courtly images — 
Evening and morning, the steep street 

of Urbino 
To where the duchess and her people 

talked 
The stately midnight through until 

they stood 
In their great window looking at the 

dawn; 
I might have had no friend that could 

not mix 
Courtesy and passion into one like 

those 
That saw the wicks grow yellow in the 

dawn; 
I might have used the one substantial 

right 
My trade allows : chosen my com- 
pany, 
And chosen what scenery had pleased 

me best.' 



52 THE PEOPLE 

Thereon my phoenix answered in re- 
proof, 

'The drunkards, pilferers of public 
funds, 

All the dishonest crowd I had driven 
away, 

When my luck changed and they dared 
meet my face, 

Crawled from obscurity, and set upon 
me 

Those I had served and some that I 
had fed ; 

Yet never have I, now nor any time, 

Complained of the people.' 

All I could reply 
Was : ' You, that have not lived in 

thought but deed, 
Can have the purity of a natural force, 
But I, whose virtues are the definitions 
Of the analytic mind, can neither close 
The eye of the mind nor keep my 

tongue from speech.' 



THE PEOPLE 53 

And yet, because my heart leaped at 

her words, 
I was abashed, and now they come 

to mind 
After nine years, I sink my head 

abashed. 



his phoenix; 

There is a queen in China, or maybe 
it's in Spain, 

And birthdays and holidays such 
praises can be heard 

Of her unblemished lineaments, a white- 
ness with no stain, 

That she might be that sprightly girl 
who was trodden by a bird ; 

And there's a score of duchesses, sur- 
passing womankind, 

Or who have found a painter to make 
them so for pay 

And smooth out stain and blemish 
with the elegance of his mind : 

I knew a phoenix in my youth so let 
them have their day. 

54 



HIS PHOENIX 55 

The young men every night applaud 

their Gaby's laughing eye, 
And Ruth St. Denis had more charm 

although she had poor luck, 
From nineteen hundred nine or ten, 

Pavlova's had the cry, 
And there's a player in the States who 

gathers up her cloak 
And flings herself out of the room when 

Juliet would be bride 
With all a woman's passion, a child's 

imperious way, 
And there are — but no matter if there 

are scores beside : 
I knew a phoenix in my youth so let 

them have their day. 

There's Margaret and Marjorie and 

Dorothy and Nan, 
A Daphne and a Mary who live in 

privacy ; 
One's had her fill of lovers, another's 

had but one, 



56 HIS PHOENIX 

Another boasts, 'I pick and choose 

and have but two or three.' 
If head and limb have beauty and the 

instep's high and light, 
They can spread out what sail they 

please for all I have to say, 
Be but the breakers of men's hearts or 

engines of delight : 
I knew a phoenix in my youth so let 

them have their day. 

There'll be that crowd to make men 
wild through all the centuries, 

And maybe there'll be some young 
belle walk out to make men wild 

Who is my beauty's equal, though that 
my heart denies, 

But not the exact likeness, the sim- 
plicity of a child, 

And that proud look as though she 
had gazed into the burning sun, 

And all the shapely body no tittle gone 
astray, 



HIS PHOENIX 57 

I mourn for that most lonely thing; 

and yet God's will be done, 
I knew a phoenix in my youth so let 

them have their day. 



A THOUGHT FROM PROPERTIUS 

She might, so noble from head 
To great shapely knees, 
The long flowing line, 
Have walked to the altar 
Through the holy images 
At Pallas Athene's side, 
Or been fit spoil for a centaur 
Drunk with the unmixed wine. 



BROKEN DREAMS 

There is grey in your hair. 

Young men no longer suddenly catch 

their breath 
When you are passing ; 
But maybe some old gaffer mutters a 

blessing 
Because it was your prayer 
Recovered him upon the bed of death. 
For your sole sake — that all heart's 

ache have known, 
And given to others all heart's ache, 
From meagre girlhood's putting on 
Burdensome beauty — for your sole 

sake 
Heaven has put away the stroke of her 

doom, 

59 



60 BROKEN DREAMS 

So great her portion in that peace you 

make 
By merely walking in a room. 

Your beauty can but leave among us 

Vague memories, nothing but mem- 
ories. 

A young man when the old men are 
done talking 

Will say to an old man, 'Tell me of 
that lady 

The poet stubborn with his passion 
sang us 

When age might well have chilled his 
blood/ 

Vague memories, nothing but mem- 
ories, 

But in the grave all, all, shall be 
renewed. 

The certainty that I shall see that 
lady 

Leaning or standing or walking 



BROKEN DREAMS 61 

In the first loveliness of womanhood, 
And with the fervour of my youthful 

eyes, 
Has set me muttering like a fool. 

You are more beautiful than any 
one 

And yet your body had a flaw : 

Your small hands were not beautiful, 

And I am afraid that you will run 

And paddle to the wrist 

In that mysterious, always brimming 
lake 

Where those that have obeyed the 
holy law 

Paddle and are perfect; leave un- 
changed 

The hands that I have kissed 

For old sakes' sake. 

The last stroke of midnight dies. 
All day in the one chair 



62 BROKEN DREAMS 

From dream to dream and rhyme to 

rhyme I have ranged 
In rambling talk with an image of air : 
Vague memories, nothing but mem- 
ories. 



A DEEP-SWORN VOW 

Others because you did not keep 
That deep-sworn vow have been friends 

of mine ; 
Yet always when I look death in the 

face, 
When I clamber to the heights of 

sleep, 
Or when I grow excited with wine, 
Suddenly I meet your face. 



65 



PRESENCES 

This night has been so strange that it 

seemed 
As if the hair stood up on my head. 
From going-down of the sun I have 

dreamed 
That women laughing, or timid or 

wild, 
In rustle of lace or silken stuff, 
Climbed up my creaking stair. They 

had read 
All I had rhymed of that monstrous 

thing 
Returned and yet unrequited love. 
They stood in the door and stood 

between 
My great wood lecturn and the fire 

64 



PRESENCES 65 

Till I could hear their hearts beating : 

One is a harlot, and one a child 

That never looked upon man with 

desire, 
And one it may be a queen. 



THE BALLOON OF THE MIND 

Hands, do what you're bid ; 
Bring the balloon of the mind 
That bellies and drags in the wind 
Into its narrow shed. 



66 



TO A SQUIRREL AT KYLE 
NA-GNO 

Come play with me ; 
Why should you run 
Through the shaking tree 
As though I'd a gun 
To strike you dead ? 
When all I would do 
Is to scratch your head 
And let you go. 



67 



ON BEING ASKED FOR A 
WAR POEM 

I think it better that in times like 

these 
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in 

truth 
We have no gift to set a statesman 

right ; 
He has had enough of meddling who 

can please 
A young girl in the indolence of her 

youth, 
Or an old man upon a winter's night. 



IN MEMORY OF ALFRED 
POLLEXFEN 

Five-and-twenty years have gone 

Since old William Pollexfen 

Laid his strong bones down in death 

By his wife Elizabeth 

In the grey stone tomb he made. 

And after twenty years they laid 

In that tomb by him and her, 

His son George, the astrologer ; 

And Masons drove from miles away 

To scatter the Acacia spray 

Upon a melancholy man 

Who had ended where his breath 

began. 
Many a son and daughter lies 
Far from the customary skies, 

69 



70 ALFRED POLLEXFEN 

The Mall and Eades's grammar school, 

In London or in Liverpool ; 

But where is laid the sailor John ? 

That so many lands had known : 

Quiet lands or unquiet seas 

Where the Indians trade or Japanese. 

He never found his rest ashore, 

Moping for one voyage more. 

Where have they laid the sailor John ? 

And yesterday the youngest son, 
A humorous, unambitious man, 
Was buried near the astrologer ; 
And are we now in the tenth year ? 
Since he, who had been contented 

long, 
A nobody in a great throng, 
Decided he would journey home, 
Now that his fiftieth year had come, 
And 'Mr. Alfred' be again 
Upon the lips of common men 
Who carried in their memory 
His childhood and his family. 



ALFRED POLLEXFEN 71 

At all these death-beds women heard 
A visionary white sea-bird 
Lamenting that a man should die ; 
And with that cry I have raised my 
cry. 



UPON A DYING LADY 



HER COURTESY 

With the old kindness, the old dis- 
tinguished grace 

She lies, her lovely piteous head amid 
dull red hair 

Propped upon pillows, rouge on the 
pallor of her face. 

She would not have us sad because she 
is lying there, 

And when she meets our gaze her eyes 
are laughter-lit, 

Her speech a wicked tale that we may 
vie with her 

72 



UPON A DYING LADY 73 

Matching our broken-hearted wit 

against her wit, 
Thinking of saints and of Petronius 

Arbiter. 



CERTAIN ARTISTS BRING HER 
DOLLS AND DRAWINGS 

Bring where our Beauty lies 

A new modelled doll, or drawing, 

With a friend's or an enemy's 

Features, or maybe showing 

Her features when a tress 

Of dull red hair was flowing 

Over some silken dress 

Cut in the Turkish fashion, 

Or it may be like a boy's. 

We have given the world our passion 

We have naught for death but toys. 



74 UPON A DYING LADY 



in 



SHE TURNS THE DOLLS FACES TO 
THE WALL 

Because to-day is some religious 

festival 
They had a priest say Mass, and even 

the Japanese, 
Heel up and weight on toe, must face 

the wall 
— Pedant in passion, learned in old 

courtesies, 
Vehement and witty she had seemed — ; 

the Venetian lady 
Who had seemed to glide to some in- 
trigue in her red shoes, 
Her domino, her panniered skirt copied 

from Longhi ; 
The meditative critic ; all are on their 

toes, 
Even our Beauty with her Turkish 

trousers on. 



UPON A DYING LADY 75 

Because the priest must have like 

every dog his day 
Or keep us all awake with baying at 

the moon, 
We and our dolls being but the world 

were best away. 

IV 

THE END OF DAY 

She is playing like a child 
And penance is the play, 
Fantastical and wild 
Because the end of day 
Shows her that some one soon 
Will come from the house, and say — 
Though play is but half-done — 
* Come in and leave the play.' — 



HER RACE 

She has not grown uncivil 
As narrow natures would 



76 UPON A DYING LADY 

And called the pleasures evil 
Happier days thought good ; 
She knows herself a woman 
No red and white of a face, 
Or rank, raised from a common 
Unreckonable race ; 
And how should her heart fail her 
Or sickness break her will 
With her dead brother's valour 
For an example still. 



VI 
HER COURAGE 

When her soul flies to the predestined 

dancing-place 
(I have no speech but symbol, the 

pagan speech I made 
Amid the dreams of youth) let her 

come face to face, 
While wondering still to be a shade, 

with Grania's shade 



UPON A DYING LADY 77 

All but the perils of the woodland 

flight forgot 
That made her Dermuid dear, and 

some old cardinal 
Pacing with half-closed eyelids in a 

sunny spot 
Who had murmured of Giorgione at 

his latest breath — 
Aye and Achilles, Timor, Babar, Bar- 

haim, all 
Who have lived in joy and laughed 

into the face of Death. 

VII 

HER FRIENDS BRING HER A 
CHRISTMAS TREE 

Pardon, great enemy, 
Without an angry thought 
We've carried in our tree, 
And here and there have bought 
Till all the boughs are gay, 
And she may look from the bed 



78 UPON A DYING LADY 

On pretty things that may 
Please a fantastic head. 
Give her a little grace, 
What if a laughing eye 
Have looked into your face — 
It is about to die. 



EGO DOMINUS TUUS 
Hie 

On the grey sand beside the shallow 
stream 

Under your old wind-beaten tower, 
where still 

A lamp burns on beside the open 
book 

That Michael Robartes left, you walk 
in the moon 

And though you have passed the best 
of life still trace 

Enthralled by the unconquerable de- 
lusion 

Magical shapes. 

79 



80 EGO DOMINUS TUUS 

Ille 

By the help of an image 
I call to my own opposite, summon all 
That I have handled least, least looked 
upon. 

Hie 

And I would find myself and not an 
image. 

Ille 

That is our modern hope and by its 

light 
We have lit upon the gentle, sensitive 

mind 
And lost the old nonchalance of the 

hand ; 
Whether we have chosen chisel, pen 

or brush 
We are but critics, or but half create, 
Timid, entangled, empty and abashed 
Lacking the countenance of our friends. 



EGO DOMINUS TUUS 81 

Hie 

And yet 
The chief imagination of Christendom 
Dante Alighieri so utterly found him- 
self 
That he has made that hollow face of 

his 
More plain to the mind's eye than any 

face 
But that of Christ. 

Ille 

And did he find himself, 
Or was the hunger that had made it 

hollow 
A hunger for the apple on the bough 
Most out of reach ? and is that spectral 

image 
The man that Lapo and that Guido 

knew? 
I think he fashioned from his opposite 
An image that might have been a 

stony face, 



82 EGO DOMINUS TUUS 

Staring upon a bedouin's horse-hair 
roof 

From doored and windowed cliff, or 
half upturned 

Among the coarse grass and the camel 
dung. 

He set his chisel to the hardest stone. 

Being mocked by Guido for his lecher- 
ous life, 

Derided and deriding, driven out 

To climb that stair and eat that bitter 
bread, 

He found the unpersuadable justice, 
he found 

The most exalted lady loved by a man. 

Hie 

Yet surely there are men who have 

made their art 
Out of no tragic war, lovers of life, 
Impulsive men that look for happiness 
And sing when they have found it. 



EGO DOMINUS TUUS 83 

Ille 

No, not sing, 
For those that love the world serve it 

in action, 
Grow rich, popular and full of influence, 
And should they paint or write still 

it is action : 
The struggle of the fly in marmalade. 
The rhetorician would deceive his 

neighbours, 
The sentimentalist himself; while art 
Is but a vision of reality. 
What portion in the world can the 

artist have 
Who has awakened from the common 

dream 
But dissipation and despair ? 

Hie 

And yet 
No one denies to Keats love of the 

world ; 
Remember his deliberate happiness. 



84 EGO DOMINUS TUUS 

Ille 

His art is happy but who knows his 

mind ? 
I see a schoolboy when I think of him, 
With face and nose pressed to a sweet- 
shop window, 
For certainly he sank into his grave 
His senses and his heart unsatisfied, 
And made — being poor, ailing and 

ignorant, 
Shut out from all the luxury of the 

world, 
The coarse-bred son of a livery stable- 
keeper — 
Luxuriant song. 

Hie 

Why should you leave the lamp 
Burning alone beside an open book. 
And trace these characters upon the 

sands ; 
A style is found by sedentary toil 
And by the imitation of great masters. 



EGO DOMINUS TUUS 85 
Ille 

Because I seek an image, not a book. 
Those men that in their writings are 

most wise 
Own nothing but their blind, stupefied 

hearts. 
I call to the mysterious one who yet 
Shall walk the wet sands by the edge 

of the stream 
And look most like me, being indeed 

my double, 
And prove of all imaginable things 
The most unlike, being my anti-self, 
And standing by these characters 

disclose 
All that I seek; and whisper it as 

though 
He were afraid the birds, who cry aloud 
Their momentary cries before it is 

dawn, 
Would carry it away to blasphemous 

men. 



A PRAYER ON GOING INTO 
MY HOUSE 

God grant a blessing on this tower 

and cottage 
And on my heirs, if all remain un- 
spoiled, 
No table, or chair or stool not simple 

enough 
For shepherd lads in Galilee; and 

grant 
That I myself for portions of the 

year 
May handle nothing and set eyes on 

nothing 
But what the great and passionate 

have used 
Throughout so many varying centuries. 

86 



A PRAYER 87 

We take it for the norm; yet should 

I dream 
Sinbad the sailor's brought a painted 

chest, 
Or image, from beyond the Loadstone 

Mountain 
That dream is a norm; and should 

some limb of the devil 
Destroy the view by cutting down an 

ash 
That shades the road, or setting up a 

cottage 
Planned in a government office, 

shorten his life, 
Manacle his soul upon the Red Sea 

bottom. 



THE PHASES OF THE MOON 

An old man cocked his ear upon a 

bridge ; 
He and his friend, their faces to the 

South, 
Had trod the uneven road. Their boots 

were soiled, 
Their Connemara cloth worn out of 

shape; 
They had kept a steady pace as though 

their beds, 
Despite a dwindling and late risen moon, 
Were distant. An old man cocked his 

ear. 

Aherne 
What made that sound ? 

83 



THE PHASES OF THE MOON 89 

ROBARTES 

A rat or water-hen 
Splashed, or an otter slid into the 

stream. 
We are on the bridge; that shadow 

is the tower, 
And the light proves that he is reading 

still. 
He has found, after the manner of his 

kind, 
Mere images; chosen this place to 

live in 
Because, it may be, of the candle light 
From the far tower where Milton's 

platonist 
Sat late, or Shelley's visionary prince : 
The lonely light that Samuel Palmer 

engraved, 
An image of mysterious wisdom won 

by toil ; 
And now he seeks in book or manu- 
script 
What he shall never find. 



90 THE PHASES OF THE MOON 

Aherne 

Why should not you 
Who know it all ring at his door, and 

speak 
Just truth enough to show that his 

whole life 
Will scarcely find for him a broken 

crust 
Of all those truths that are your daily 

bread ; 
And when you have spoken take the 

roads again ? 



Robartes 

He wrote of me in that extravagant 

style 
He had learnt from Pater, and to 

round his tale 
Said I was dead; and dead I chose 

to be. 



THE PHASES OF THE MOON 91 

Aherne 

Sing me the changes of the moon once 

more; 
True song, though speech: 'mine 

author sung it me.' 

Robartes 

Twenty-and-eight the phases of the 

moon, 
The full and the moon's dark and all 

the crescents, 
Twenty-and-eight, and yet but six- 

and-twenty 
The cradles that a man must needs be 

rocked in : 
For there's no human life at the full 

or the dark. 
From the first crescent to the half, the 

dream 
But summons to adventure and the 

man 



92 THE PHASES OF THE MOON 

Is always happy like a bird or a beast ; 
But while the moon is rounding to- 
wards the full 
He follows whatever whim's most 

difficult 
Among whims not impossible, and 

though scarred 
As with the cat-o'-nine-tails of the 

mind, 
His body moulded from within his 

body 
Grows comelier. Eleven pass, and 

then 
Athenae takes Achilles by the hair, 
Hector is in the dust, Nietzsche is born, 
Because the heroes' crescent is the 

twelfth. 
And yet, twice born, twice buried, 

grow he must, 
Before the full moon, helpless as a 

worm. 
The thirteenth moon but sets the soul 

at war 



THE PHASES OF THE MOON 93 

In its own being, and when that war's 
begun 

There is no muscle in the arm ; and 
after 

Under the frenzy of the fourteenth 
moon 

The soul begins to tremble into still- 
ness, 

To die into the labyrinth of itself 

Aherne 

Sing out the song; sing to the end, 
and sing 

The strange reward of all that disci- 
pline. 

Robartes 

All thought becomes an image and 

the soul 
Becomes a body : that body and that 

soul 
Too perfect at the full to lie in a 

cradle, 



94 THE PHASES OF THE MOON 

Too lonely for the traffic of the world : 
Body and soul cast out and cast away 
Beyond the visible world. 

Aherne 

All dreams of the soul 
End in a beautiful man's or woman's 
body. 

Robartes 

Have you not always known it ? 

Aherne 

The song will have it 
That those that we have loved got 

their long fingers 
From death, and wounds, or on Sinai's 

top, 
Or from some bloody whip in their 

own hands. 
They ran from cradle to cradle till 

at last 



THE PHASES OF THE MOON 95 

Their beauty dropped out of the 

loneliness 
Of body and soul. 

Robartes 
The lovers' heart knows that. 

Aherne 

It must be that the terror in their eyes 
Is memory or foreknowledge of the 

hour 
When all is fed with light and heaven 

is bare. 

Robartes 

When the moon's full those creatures 

of the full 
Are met on the waste hills by country 

men 
Who shudder and hurry by : body 

and soul 
Estranged amid the strangeness of 

themselves, 



96 THE PHASES OF THE MOON 

Caught up in contemplation, the 

mind's eye 
Fixed upon images that once were 

thought, 
For separate, perfect, and immovable 
Images can break the solitude 
Of lovely, satisfied, indifferent eyes. 

And thereupon with aged, high-pitched 

voice 
Aherne laughed, thinking of the man 

within, 
His sleepless candle and laborious pen. 



ROBARTES 

And after that the crumbling of the 

moon. 
The soul remembering its loneliness 
Shudders in many cradles; all is 

changed, 
It would be the World's servant, and 

as it serves, 



THE PHASES OF THE MOON 97 

Choosing whatever task's most difficult 
Among tasks not impossible, it takes 
F on the body and upon the soul 
The coarseness of the drudge. 

Ah ERNE 

Before the full 
It sought itself and afterwards the 
world. 

Robartes 

Because you are forgotten, half out 
of life, 

And never wrote a book your thought 
is clear. 

Reformer, merchant, statesman, 
learned man, 

Dutiful husband, honest wife by turn, 

Cradle upon cradle, and all in flight 
and all 

Deformed because there is no de- 
formity 

But saves us from a dream. 



98 THE PHASES OF THE MOON 

Aherne 

And what of those 
That the last servile crescent has set 
free? 

Robartes 

Because all dark, like those that are 
all light, 

They are cast beyond the verge, and 
in a cloud, 

Crying to one another like the bats ; 

And having no desire they cannot tell 

What's good or bad, or what it is to 
triumph 

At the perfection of one's own obedi- 
ence; 

And yet they speak what's blown into 
the mind ; 

Deformed beyond deformity, un- 
formed, 

Insipid as the dough before it is baked, 

They change their bodies at a word. 



THE PHASES OF THE MOON 99 

Aherne 

And then ? 

ROBARTES 

When all the dough has been so 

kneaded up 
That it can take what form cook 

Nature fancy 
The first thin crescent is wheeled 

round once more. 

Aherne 

But the escape ; the song's not finished 
yet. 

Robartes 

Hunchback and saint and fool are 

the last crescents. 
The burning bow that once could 

shoot an arrow 
Out of the up and down, the wagon 

wheel 



100 THE PHASES OF THE MOON 

Of beauty's cruelty and wisdom's 

chatter, 
Out of that raving tide is drawn 

betwixt 
Deformity of body and of mind. 



Aherne 

Were not our beds far off I'd ring the 

bell, 
Stand under the rough roof-timbers 

of the hall 
Beside the castle door, where all is 

stark 
Austerity, a place set out for wisdom 
That he will never find ; I'd play a 

part; 
He would never know me after all 

these years 
But take me for some drunken country 

man ; 
I'd stand and mutter there until he 

caught 



THE PHASES OF THE MOON 101 

'Hunchback and saint and fool,' and 

that they came 
Under the three last crescents of the 

moon, 
And then I'd stagger out. He'd crack 

his wits 
Day after day, yet never find the 

meaning. 

And then he laughed to think that what 

seemed hard 
Should be so simple — a bat rose from 

the hazels 
And circled round him with its squeaky 

cry, ,] 

The light in the tower window was put 

out. 



THE CAT AND THE MOON 

The cat went here and there 

And the moon spun round like a top, 

And the nearest kin of the moon 

The creeping cat looked up. 

Black Minnaloushe stared at the moon, 

For wander and wail as he would 

The pure cold light in the sky 

Troubled his animal blood. 

Minnaloushe runs in the grass, 

Lifting his delicate feet. 

Do you dance, Minnaloushe, do you 

dance ? 

When two close kindred meet 

What better than call a dance. 

Maybe the moon may learn, 

Tired of that courtly fashion, 
102 



THE CAT AND THE MOON 103 

A new dance turn. 

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass 

From moonlit place to place, 

The sacred moon overhead 

Has taken a new phase. 

Does Minnaloushe know that his pupils 

Will pass from change to change, 

And that from round to crescent, 

From crescent to round they range ? 

Minnaloushe creeps through the grass 

Alone, important and wise, 

And lifts to the changing moon 

His changing eyes. 



THE SAINT AND THE 
HUNCHBACK 

Hunchback 

Stand up and lift your hand and 

bless 
A man that finds great bitterness 
In thinking of his lost renown. 
A Roman Caesar is held down 
Under this hump. 

Saint 

God tries each man 
According to a different plan. 
I shall not cease to bless because 
I lay about me with the taws 
That night and morning I may thrash 

104 



SAINT AND HUNCHBACK 105 

Greek Alexander from my flesh, 
Augustus Caesar, and after these 
That great rogue Alcibiades. 

Hunchback 

To all that in your flesh have stood 
And blessed, I give my gratitude, 
Honoured by all in their degrees, 
But most to Alcibiades. 



TWO SONGS OF A FOOL 



A speckled cat and a tame hare 

Eat at my hearthstone 

And sleep there ; 

And both look up to me alone 

For learning and defence 

As I look up to Providence. 

I start out of my sleep to think 
Some day I may forget 
Their food and drink ; 
Or, the house door left unshut, 
The hare may run till it's found 
The horn's sweet note and the tooth 
of the hound. 

I bear a burden that might well try 
Men that do all by rule, 

106 



TWO SONGS OF A FOOL 107 

And what can I 

That am a wandering witted fool 
But pray to God that He ease 
My great responsibilities. 



ii 

I slept on my three-legged stool by 

the fire, 
The speckled cat slept on my knee ; 
We never thought to enquire 
Where the brown hare might be, 
And whether the door were shut. 
Who knows how she drank the wind 
Stretched up on two legs from the mat, 
Before she had settled her mind 
To drum with her heel and to leap : 
Had I but awakened from sleep 
And called her name she had heard, 
It may be, and had not stirred, 
That now, it may be, has found 
The horn's sweet note and the tooth 

of the hound. 



ANOTHER SONG OF A FOOL 

This great purple butterfly, 
In the prison of my hands, 
Has a learning in his eye 
Not a poor fool understands. 

Once he lived a schoolmaster 

With a stark, denying look, 

A string of scholars went in fear 

Of his great birch and his great book. 

Like the clangour of a bell, 
Sweet and harsh, harsh and sweet, 
That is how he learnt so well 
To take the roses for his meat. 



108 



THE DOUBLE VISION OF 
MICHAEL ROBARTES 

i 

On the grey rock of Cashel the mind's 

eye 
Has called up the cold spirits that are 

born M 

When the old moon is vanished from 

the sky 
And the new still hides her horn. 

Under blank eyes and fingers never 

still 
The particular is pounded till it is 

man, 
When had I my own will? 
Oh, not since life began. 

109 



110 MICHAEL ROBARTES 

Constrained, arraigned, baffled, bent 

and unbent 
By these wire-jointed jaws and limbs 

of wood, 
Themselves obedient, 
Knowing not evil and good ; 

Obedient to some hidden magical 

breath. 
They do not even feel, so abstract are 

they, 
So dead beyond our death, 
Triumph that we obey. 

ii 

On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly 

saw 
A Sphinx with woman breast and lion 

paw, 
A Buddha, hand at rest, 
Hand lifted up that blest ; 
And right between these two a girl 

at play 



MICHAEL ROBARTES 111 

That it may be had danced her life 

away, 
For now being dead it seemed 
That she of dancing dreamed. 

Although I saw it all in the mind's eye 
There can be nothing solider till I die ; 
I saw by the moon's light 
Now at its fifteenth night. 

One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by 

the moon 
Gazed upon all things known, all 

things unknown, 
In triumph of intellect 
With motionless head erect. 

That other's moonlit eyeballs never 

moved, 
Being fixed on all things loved, all 

things unloved, 
Yet little peace he had 
For those that love are sad. 



112 MICHAEL ROBARTES 

Oh, little did they care who danced 

between, 
And little she by whom her dance was 

seen 
So that she danced. No thought, 
Body perfection brought, 

For what but eye and ear silence the 
mind 

With the minute particulars of man- 
kind? 

Mind moved yet seemed to stop 

As 'twere a spinning-top. 

In contemplation had those three so 

wrought 
Upon a moment, and so stretched it 

out 
That they, time overthrown, 
Were dead yet flesh and bone. 



MICHAEL ROBARTES 113 



in 

I knew that I had seen, had seen at 

last 
That girl my unremembering nights 

hold fast 
Or else my dreams that fly, 
If I should rub an eye, 



And yet in flying fling into my meat 
A crazy juice that makes the pulses 

beat 
As though I had been undone 
By Homer's Paragon 

Who never gave the burning town a 

thought ; 
To such a pitch of folly I am brought, 
Being caught between the pull 
Of the dark moon and the full, 



114 MICHAEL ROBARTES 

The commonness of thought and 

images 
That have the frenzy of our western 

seas. 
Thereon I made my moan, 
And after kissed a stone, 

And after that arranged it in a song 
Seeing that I, ignorant for so long, 
Had been rewarded thus 
In Cormac's ruined house. 



NOTE 

" Unpack the loaded pern," p. 36. 

When I was a child at Sligo I could see above 
my grandfather's trees a little column of smoke 
from "the pern mill," and was told that "pern" 
was another name for the spool, as I was accus- 
tomed to call it, on which thread was wound. 
One could not see the chimney for the trees, and 
the smoke looked as if it came from the mountain, 
and one day a foreign sea-captain asked me if 
that was a burning mountain. 

W. B. Y. 



Printed in the United States of America. 



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of Macmillan books by the same author 



BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

Per Arnica Silentia Lunae 

Cloth, 8vo, $1.50 

Here Mr. Yeats writes of many things — of men, of litera- 
ture, of life. He allows himself to talk freely of that which 
interests him, now touching vividly on this, now on that, 
topic. The sketches are distinguished hj the author's fin- 
ished literary style, and read like the conversation of a 
gifted poet — such as he only indulges in in company with 
his intimates. 

" An adequate critique of Mr. Yeats' latest volume would 
be considerably longer than the work itself, which combines 
pregnancy of thought, beauty of prose, rhythm and brevity 
in a really startling degree." — Chicago Evening Post. 

"Those who love the mystic, occult, and poetical, who are 
inspired by dream upon dream, and reality that ordinarily 
is neither visible nor tangible will experience much pleasure 
through this little book." — Book Review Digest. 



Responsibilities 

Cloth, 12mo,$1.25 

"William Butler Yeats is by far the biggest poetic per- 
sonality living among us at present. He is great both as a 
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"This poetry has the rhythm that is incantation aud 
sorcery, that is not of the senses nor of the spirit, but of a 
mingling which is exaltation." — Chicago Evening Post. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

Reveries over Childhood and Youth 

$2.00 

In this book the celebrated Irish author gives us his reminiscences 
of his childhood and youth. The memories are written, as is to be 
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"Written in charming simplicity, it records fragmentary memories 
of the sensitive, imaginative youthof the Irish poet." 

— New York Times. 

The Hour Glass and Other Plays 

$1.25 
"The Hour Glass" is one of Mr. Yeats' noble and effective plays, 
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Stories of Red Hanrahan 

$1.25 

These tales belong to the realm of pure lyrical expression. They 
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" Lovers of Mr. > -tive and delicate writing will find him 

at his best in this volume. 11 — Spring, field Republican. 

Ideas of Good and Evil 

$1.50 
Essays on art and lif<\ wherein are set forth much of Yeats' philoso- 
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$1.50 

A collection of tales from Irish life and of Irish fancy, retold from 
peasants' stories with no additions except an occasional comment. 

UnicornFromtheStarsandOther Plays 

By WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 
and LADY GREGORY 

" One of the most ambitious productions of the Irish Theatre." 

— The Nation. 



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BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS 

The Cutting of an Agate 

12mo, $1.50 
"Mr. Yeats is probably the most important as well 
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The Green Helmet and Other Poems 

Decorated cloth, 12mo, $1 .25 
The initial piece in this volume is a deliciously con- 
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that they knock off his head and who maintains that 
after they have done that he will knock off theirs. 
There is a real meaning in the play which it will not 
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Lyrical and Dramatic Poems 

In Two Volumes 

Vol. I. Lyrical Poems, $2.00 
Vol. II. Plays (Revised), $2.00 
The two-volume edition of the Irish poet's works 
included everything he has done in verse up to the 
present time. The first volume contains his lyrics; 
the second includes all of his five dramas in verse; 
"The Countess Cathleen," "The Land of Heart's 
Desire," "The King's Threshold," "On Baile's Strand," 
and "The Shadowy Waters." 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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NEW MACMILLAN POETRY 



Escape and Fantasy 



By GEORGE ROSTREVOR 

Cloth, 12mo, $1.00 

This is a book of poems written by a man who has a delicate fancy 
and art. Some of the verse is suggestive of the work of Ralph Hodg- 
son, whose writings have made such a profound impression in this coun- 
try and in England. All of it shows marked originality and power. 

Poems 

By RALPH HODGSON 

$1.00 

Recently awarded the Edward de Polignac prize for poetry, Ralph 
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in the little yellow chap books of the "Flying Fame," "The Song of 
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"'Eve,' . . . The most fascinating poem of our time." 

— The Nation. 

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By SCUDDER MIDDLETON 

Author of " Streets and Faces " 

Boards, 12mo, $1.00 

Mr. Middleton's earlier book, "Streets and Faces," was considered 
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The Tree of Life 

By JOHN GOULD FLETCHER 

Cloth, 12mo, Preparing 

This is a collection of poems setting forth a love experience. Mr. 
Fletcher is already favorably known, and this book will serve still 
further to advance his reputation and to strengthen his hold upon the 
lovers of distinguished work in thepoetic field. 

70 8 «*JL 

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